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Uto
Twiggy
Tress
Aplomb
Kurage
Spokes
Plena
Satellight
Foscarini
Chap. 3 — Design as research
Details of the lamp and sketches with
a proposed use of 3D washi paper.
Right, Kurage with its soft luminosity
and designers Oki Sato and Luca Nichetto.
Kurage /2015 — design Nichetto + Nendo
About shedding light
Poetic and ‘glocal’, the Kurage table lamp
expresses the coming together of two
design visions, on the one hand that of the
Italian Luca Nichetto and on the other the
Japanese Oki Sato of Studio Nendo.
Two years earlier, the designers had
worked together, remotely, to create a
collection of objects and these seven
pieces included a paper fl oor lamp (Paper
Ice Cream) that inspired Foscarini to invest
in its own version. The germinating notion
was to preserve the same sensory and
shape-related qualities, but to create a
plastic diffuser to industrialise the effect
corresponding to the texture of paper.
After a long period of gestation and
experimentation, the fi nal decision made
was to pay homage to the initial formal
archetype, hence the decision to focus
precisely on washi paper. As a result,
Kurage reinterprets the traditional paper
lamp, drawing on the Akari series by Isamo
Noguchi, and it is hand-crafted thanks to a
very unusual processing technique
developed by Aoya, the only manufacturer
in the world of hand-made three-
dimensional washi paper, in the city of
Tottori in Japan. This smooth and at the
same time porous paper is made with the
prized bark of the mulberry tree and fi lters
light to create a warm and relaxed
atmosphere. Moreover, the traditional art of
hand-making washi paper has been listed
by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage
of Humanity. The Japanese word kurage
means jellyfi sh: the spherical lampshade is
in fact reminiscent of the organic shape of
a marine animal and is simply resting,
almost fl oating when the light is on, on the
transparent structure designed specifi cally
to minimise shadows. The entire assembly
is suspended on four slender natural
coloured ash wood legs. The electrical
cable is also covered with a paper fi bre
sock with the utmost attention to detail
and tactility.
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